A technical advance in a silver halide color photographic material for photographing is continuing and a photographic material in an ISO 400 class conventionally called an ultrahigh sensitivity film has come into common use by general users.
In order to achieve high sensitivity and high image quality, various investigations have been made. For instance, JP-A-58-113930 (the term "JP-A" as used herein means an "unexamined published Japanese patent application"), JP-A-58-113934 and JP-A-59-119350 disclose a multi-layer color photographic material having high sensitivity and improved in granularity, sharpness and color reproducibility by using a tabular silver halide emulsion having an aspect ratio of 8 or more. The tabular silver halide grain is advantageous because it has a large grain surface area even with the same volume as compared with a cubic, octahedral or massive grain and therefore, a large amount of sensitizing dye can be used, whereby light absorption can be increased and high sensitivity and high image quality can be achieved.
Also, JP-A-63-220238 discloses that by integrating dislocation lines, the tabular silver halide grain can have high sensitivity.
Further, JP-A-62-18555, JP-A-62-99751, JP-A-62-115435 and JP-A-63-280241 disclose that the sharpness can be improved by using a tabular grain having a circle-corresponding diameter of 0.6 .mu.m or less.
However, the above-described conventional techniques are insufficient in considering tabular grains in a small size region having a circle-corresponding diameter of 0.6 .mu.m or less and a more hard gradation tabular emulsion having yet excellent sensitivity/granularity ratio and being in a small size region has been demanded.